I used to work in insurance. This might actually be the biggest blow to Testla, even more than stock prices. If people keep vandalizing the vehicles, eventually the insurance has to come due. And repair costs are not cheap, its basically only dealers and a limited number of repair places that partner.
And insurance companies always make sure they get their money.
What kinds of vandalism are most costly to repair, without endangering the lives of drivers, passengers and people nearby? I want to see if those are mentioned in future news coverage.
Well, a 1:1 mixture of chlorine bleach and vinegar should damn near instantly and permanently corrode the steel. Don't breathe the fumes, but I have toyed with the idea of a squirt gun filled with instarust.
I wouldn't go after individual Tesla owners. It wasn't always like this. They adopted the earliest and cheapest (in the US) EV. I won't buy one now, but I would have three years ago.
I understand the dealership thing. Are most of them directly corporate?
IIRC, if one or two tires, or all four tires are damaged, insurance will cover it. But insurance won't cover three tires being damaged if I understand correctly. So slash three tires per car.
So it's actually working!
That makes it more expensive to own a Tesla, and that's one more thing that will make it less attractive to buy, either new or used.
It's debatable whether this is fair, but clearly it achieves a political goal.
Yup, my rates soared and insurance companies were dropping customers left and right. I had to abruptly trade it in and it definitely put me off buying Hyundai/Kia for the foreseeable future.
Ironically, even without the vandalism these cars were ridiculously expensive to insure. When I bought my EV I checked insurance premiums, and it would’ve cost $100/mo more to insure a model 3 similarly priced EV from another maker.
this is what the fanbois never bragged about when the brand used to carry some level of prestige
Some higher being observing Earth from a far distance must be intrigued by the pattern recognition of us destroying one specific car while completely ignoring the thousands of others.
Like, imagine when we look at single-cell organisms and see them swarm something. We’d never apply any kind of nuanced interpersonal/sociopolitical reasons to be the cause.
I think it goes Luigi > Tesla Removal > and some time down the road, we’ll be in what would later be historically considered a revolution— what’s crazy is with how interconnected we are today, it could be a global revolution of some kind.